


The soul-pendant

by Ghelik



Series: The 100 Fics [21]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Familiars, soul animal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2018-10-03 10:08:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10242254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghelik/pseuds/Ghelik
Summary: The Ark was too small for its population. That is why the soul-pendants are created: to stick the soul in it as soon as the baby is born, because there is too little room to have a corporeal soul running around.





	1. On the run

“Are you ready?”

Murphy takes a deep breath, nods with a firm “No.”

Emori rolls her eyes at him. “Come on! Aren’t you curious to know what it looks like?”

Murphy gives her a skeptic look. They’re sitting next to the fire in their cave, a stone between both of them and her soul-pendant glowing faintly on top of it. Emori’s familiar, a fox she calls Baba affectionately, has been sniffing at it before jumping into the grounder. Every now and then he can see it’s ghostly form peaking out of her: looking through her eyes, the ears poking out of her hair; or curling around her shoulders, it’s long snout pulled into a shrewd smile.

Murphy had never seen a familiar before landing on earth. On the Ark, they’re called souls and are stuck into soul-pendants as soon as the baby has been born since there was too little room to have a corporeal soul running around. The only arker whose soul he has seen is Octavia’s – a butterfly that changes sizes depending on her mood. It’s a creepy thing to have constantly around, especially when it’s as big as your forearm and looks at you with its ugly face. 

He takes a deep breath and looks up from his soul-pendant into Emori’s dark eyes. “Do it.”

He can feel the blow of the hammer on the translucent crystal of his soul-pendant all the way to his bones. It’s painful, and he’s scared shitless when she raises the hammer once again.

To prevent soul-pendants from breaking in a lifetime of hard work, they’re made out of a very sturdy glass-like material. If it takes more than a few blows and Murphy feels every one of them.

Finally the glass cracks, and out leaks… something. It’s formless, like some thick clear-blue goo that rolls down the rock and onto the floor. For a heart-stopping moment, he thinks they’ve killed it.

They’ve killed his soul, and he’s destined to live as a soulless shell for the rest of his days.

Emori’s familiar slips out of her, crouching next to the blue goo, sniffing at it. The goo moves, and before he can think twice about it, Murphy launches himself at it. The creature is very, very small, sticky and…long.

“What is this thing?”

“Looks like birth-fluids” Emori pulls a face, her fox-soul sitting on her lap. “They didn’t even clean it before sticking it in _that_.”

Murphy brushes the disgusting fluids from his soul. It seems to be growing with each breath, loosening the knot in Murphy’s chest. Having liberated it feels like the first breath of fresh air on Earth did: exhilarant, and exciting. For once his muscles seem loose, his lungs big enough for him to breathe normally. The soft whimpers he’s been hearing in the back of his mind for all his life disappearing completely.

“Well? Are you going to show it to me?”

 Murphy looks up at Emori; this beautiful, bright girl that has given him his freedom once again. The soul animal moves, slipping out of the cup of his hands to peek at her. Its scaly head is as big as his thumb now, and the body coils on itself.

“It’s a snake.” He finds himself whispering. And even if it were a cockroach he would love it, but… But he knows snakes are widely regarded as ‘bad animals.’ What does it say of him that he’s a snake at his very soul?

Baba has once again stepped away from Emori – and how can she bare being apart of her familiar even for one second he cannot understand – looking curiously at the snake.

Emori drags her butt over the floor to sit next to him, pressing her head against his, her smile is beautiful and her hand warm and reassuring on the back of his neck. “It is as beautiful as you” she whispers into his ear. Murphy can feel the snake preening in his hands before it starts to slither over his arm, the body seems to be never-ending as it just keeps coiling around his arm. It reaches the shoulder closest to Emori, batting its forked tongue at her. She’s so close it brushes against her cheek.

The grounder laughs. “Can I pet him?”

“Yeah” he answers in awe, and when her hand brushes the now fist-sized head, he can feel that, too. It’s not exactly like she’s touching him, but something similar and he has to think of all the times he’s touched Baba.

Does it feel this good for her, too when she touches her familiar? Is it this overwhelming for her, too? Because he feels one step away from coming in his pants like some lame teen.

 

“He’s so soft! I had never thought a snake could be this soft!” Her smile is blinding, and he finds himself smiling like a dope back at her. The snake presses its head against her palm, and he feels it from his brow to the tips of his toes, when he pulls Emori onto his lap, the snake slides around her shoulders. He shudders, surging towards her.

Emori laughs against his lips. “It’s nice to see he likes me.” 

“He loves you,” mumbles Murphy like some sappy movie-cliché, but Emori laughs again. “Good. I love him, too.”

 


	2. On the Ring

Bellamy plays distractedly with the soul-pendant that hangs around his neck. He can feel Echo’s eyes on him as she comes closer, draped on her shoulders is her soul – familiar as the grounders call it. Hers is a lynx by the name of Trikova. Over the few months he’s been on the ground he’s seen a hundred different familiars, trotting beside their humans, perched on their shoulders, curiously peeking out of their bodies.

Over the few peaceful months in Arkadia, some of skaikru got their soul-pendants open and started carrying their souls around like grounders. Most of skaikru, though, still had them inside the pendants, too used to their weight and feel to crack them open.

Bellamy watches Trikova stretch its huge paws and jump from Echo’s shoulders to come and greet him. It bumps its head against his hand and Echo all but purrs when he pets her familiar.

They're weird: not quite solid, not quite ethereal. They’re cold and warm at the same time, soft and unyielding. Sometimes they look see-through, others they’re like real animals.

Echo’s eyes dart to the soul-pendant, her expression tightening. Trikova doesn’t whine exactly, but the sound of distress is something Bellamy’s come to associate with the pendants. For grounders the lack of a familiar is worse than being a _frikdreina_. Reapers didn’t have familiars; the bond severed to make them into mindless creatures. And the few reapers Abby managed to save – the few whose familiars hadn’t died due to separation, torture or drugs – were never quite themselves. Bellamy remembers Lincoln, how different he was: unstable on his own feet, questioning everything he did, never quite as gentle or as kind as he had been back when he first met him: deer-shaped familiar at his side.

After their first year, Emori cracked Raven’s pendant open, revealing a wet-looking magpie. Apparently, familiars have to be cleaned off the birth-fluids, much like babies did. On the Ark, the soul was shoved into the pendant as quickly as possible to prevent it from getting a shape.

Six months ago, Monty asked for his soul-pendant to be open. His familiar is a delicate barn owl, its face so beautiful, it’s physically painful to look at. Yesterday Harper asked the grounders if they could open hers. Bellamy has seen the change having the familiar released had on his people, and yet he can’t bring himself to ask for the same. The glass bead around his throat pulses with his heart, with his breathing. Without it, he would feel naked. And what if his familiar is something big and fastidious. It could be an elephant. It could be something dangerous: a bear or a giant monkey, and he wouldn’t have a clue how to control it.

“Harper’s familiar is a dolphin,” Echo says, coming to stand by his side. She looks down, tracing Earth’s silhouette on the glass of the observation deck window. “I had never seen a creature like it. She had to tell me what it was.” Her smile is slightly self-deprecating. “We didn’t have many sea-creatures in Azgeda.”

“Is she ok?”

Raven was sick after the soul-pendant cracked open. Monty kept banging into stuff, his movements trying to mirror the owl’s.

“Yes. The good thing about familiars is they don’t breathe or eat as regular animals do. So it isn’t like Harper’s going to start carrying a fishbowl everywhere she goes.”

Echo chuckles, but there’s a tear shimmering in the corner of her eye, and something in Bellamy’s chest twists. After nearly three years in space, Bellamy’s come to know every member of his new family, they have traded a hundred stories, remembering the time before Praimfaya. Even Echo, who’s the most reticent to share her life’s story has told them about the Winter and Summer Palaces, about her childhood, about her trainers. When she was very drunk on Monty’s latest batch of moonshine, she spoke of Roan and the azgedan king’s older brother Hector.

He lays a hand on her shoulder. “Hey. You wanna talk about it?”

She’s staring out of the window, eyes on the dusty ball that was once her home. “It’s nothing.”

The tear hangs precariously from her long eyelashes. When she blinks it rolls down her cheek. He watches it traveling down her smooth skin, curving down her jaw. She shakes herself forcefully rearing her hand away from the glass like it’s burned her. “My apologies. I am being sentimental.” At his feet, Trikova grumbles as it prowls to her side. “There are things I need to be doing. Excuse me.”

Years ago he would’ve let her leave. He would’ve told himself it’s none of his business, and force himself to not care about the spy. But it’s been years, and he’s grown to know and love this woman.

He steps in front of her, his hands landing smoothly on her shoulders. Their relationship is still new enough that the gentle press of his fingers on her bare shoulders startles her. “Talk to me.”

She stares at the pendant on his sternum. “I just remembered a silly episode of my youth, Bellamy.” She smiles, it doesn’t reach her eyes. “It’s not important.”

“Tell me?”

He laces their fingers together, and Echo turns away. She presses her lips into a white line, shakes herself and sighs. “Hector was often sick as a teen. I had just come to live in the palace and Roan was always boisterous and aggressive. Hector was… kind. Nia didn’t approve, of course, and worked hard to chip all that kindness away before he reached adulthood. But back then he was kind and often sick. His familiar was very small. A flying fish: sleek and silver, with big round eyes. Some kid had told him it couldn’t live off air, so he carried this big glass bowl with him everywhere. Even as he got older and knew it wasn’t necessary, he did. Sometimes his familiar wouldn’t even be in the bowl, but elegantly swimming through the air, the butterfly-like fins beating the air like wings.”

Bellamy squeezes her hand.

“It isn’t silly to be sad that he’s dead.”

“He died years ago. Years before Praimfaya, too. This useless sentiment…”

“I like your useless sentiment.”

She smiles shaking her head. “Of course you would.” Her sigh shakes her from head to toe. Trikova appears suddenly on her shoulders. “You are like him,” she brushes his hair back. It’s getting too long. He should cut it, “too kind and soft for your own good.”

“I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”

“Of course you wouldn’t” she pecks him on the corner of the lips. “I really have things to do.”

He lets go of her hands and watches her walk away. “Echo,” he calls when she’s at the door. She turns the harsh fluorescent lights of the Ring highlight every scar on her familiar’s body. Its blind eye staring curiously at him. “Thank you, for sharing that with me.”

She doesn’t know how to answer, so she inclines her head and walks away.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this came out of nowhere.   
> Thank you so much for reading and commenting

**Author's Note:**

> As always this was unbetaed.  
> Thanks for reading.


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